I also posted this in the OS/Software forum, because I'm not exactly sure what my problem falls under. I have a feeling it's a problem with my hard-drive, but I dunno. Anyway here's my post:

quote Dbombdbomb

I've been having some computer problems lately. I think it's more of a hardware problem, but my computer knowledge is... not so good.

About two nights ago I was playing some WoW when my computer started making these noises. It was like a honking noise that lasted about 2 seconds then stopped, and about 10 seconds after the noise stopped my computer would lag. That went on for about two hours or so honking intermittently, maybe once every 10-15 minutes. Being the smart guy that I am I decided it would be best to completely ignore the noises and continue raiding my way through Karazhan... not even considering the idea of shutting my computer off because it could be overheating or altogether dying.

Anyway the honks continued until the final honk which was just a continuous honk. During the honk my computer completely locked up. I let it continue to see if it would stop but it didn't, and I had to hit the power button.

Now when I turn on my computer after anywhere from 5-45 minutes of use the mouse disappears. The cursor remains frozen in place on the screen, but the actual mouse becomes separate from the cursor, and invisible. So I can actually control the mouse but I can't see the mouse as I'm controlling it. Other than that my computer is running fine now for the most part.

I'm not sure if what I just said was clear, but it definitely isn't a problem with my mouse.

I've tried running all my anti-virus/anti-spyware programs which came back clean. I cleaned my fans as well as the dust in my computer. I de-fragged my hard-drive, and checked it for corruptions. My next step is to check the RAM, which I've been avoiding because it's a pain in the ass, but I dunno what else to do.

So any help/suggestions/diagnosis is much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Also my computer now does this thing where it will lag for a second or two and if there was sound at the time it lagged the sound will skip/repeat. It does this a lot more when I have something open like WoW, which makes me think it's a RAM problem. Help pl0x!

Also, if this isn't the right forum I apologize, feel free to flame/close/delete/destroy me.

Try playing with only one stick of RAM and alternate them to see if you can isolate the problem within the RAM. Otherwise I'd suggest running memtest86 and seeing how many errors you get with all of your RAM modules, if any.

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